Three years (B)OLD, and still curious

5 August 2019

3 Years BOLD blog. Video by Walkingframes

Three years ago today, BOLD – the Blog on Learning and Development – set out on a journey to explore how children and young people learn, what they need to improve their learning and develop to their full potential, and the roles played by their parents, teachers, and peers, as well as by policymakers. We wanted to know about other important factors, such as children’s genes, their unique brains, their socioeconomic environments, cultural and moral influences, their emotions and mental health, but also their nutrition and even gut bacteria. We wanted to find out how new technologies and artificial intelligence, along with other global societal, economic and environmental developments, are influencing young people’s paths as learners, thinkers, doers, and influencers.

We knew, of course, that all of these areas were already being investigated by tireless researchers, practitioners eager to try out new things, and visionary entrepreneurs. But we wanted BOLD, the Jacobs Foundation‘s Blog on Learning and Development, to reach out and share the wealth of available knowledge with a broad, worldwide audience. We wanted to serve as a platform, a promoter of knowledge and dialogue, a mediator and translator, and a critical scrutinizer. We wanted to foster collaboration among the many individuals and organizations that have dedicated themselves to boosting the learning and development of the world’s children and youth. We wanted to show what works and what doesn’t, encourage questions, spark new interdisciplinary collaborations, and reach audiences through new channels.

“BOLD wants to serve as a platform, a promoter of knowledge and dialogue, a mediator and translator, and a critical scrutinizer.”

To date, we have published 470 blog posts, written by 200 authors of countless nationalities. We reach approximately 15,000 readers each month. We have published all kinds of material: reviews, statements, opinion pieces and rants, long interviews, short video statements, elaborate info graphics, recordings of presentations, and animated short films. We have tweeted and posted, and we have recruited contributors who had never before thought of becoming bloggers – and many of them have even had fun working on their blog posts!

We have worked with dozens of amazing journalists, science writers, editors, translators, interviewers, graphic designers, creative directors, and coders. We have collaborated with authors who are also teachers and parents and policymakers and researchers and entrepreneurs. We have worked with a multitude of inspiring individuals, many of whom have become supportive as well as critical friends, and also with a wide variety of outstanding organizations and institutions.

A special thanks goes out to all of them as well as to our readers! And we would like to thank all of the researchers and practitioners who have generously shared with us – and with our readers – their knowledge and ideas, their wonder and doubts, and we are looking forward to many more insightful blog posts, discussions, encounters and discoveries. Together with you, we will continue to explore new formats, channels, ways of creating content, and kinds of thinking, and to collaborate with new authors and partners. As always: We urge you to contribute, to comment, to share, and to help us shape BOLD!

Footnotes

Video “3 Years BOLD” by Walkingframes.

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